Anna Mayer's art practice is sculptural and social, with an emphasis on hand-built ceramics and another molten material: bronze. Her methodology emerges from site-specific analogue firing projects and critical engagement with pre- and post-retro culture. Mayer revels in the fact that ceramics historically have been used to create highly functional items as well as intensely symbolic objects. Her work is part of this lineage, with equal concern for the future and a dramatically shifting climate—ecological and political.
In 2021 Mayer was invited by UK organizations Arts Cabinet and the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment, and Society to be part of a research residency, for which she was paired with an engineer from the Hazelab at Imperial College, London. Mayer was Assistant Director of the LA-based Institute For Figuring from 2009 – 2018. Currently, she is Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Houston.